Archive for May 2008

CLEVELAND, Ohio — A West Virginia woman is at the Cleveland Clinic after walking the line between life and death.

Doctors are calling Val Thomas a medical miracle. They said they can’t explain how she is alive.

They said Thomas suffered two heart attacks and had no brain waves for more than 17 hours. At about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, her heart stopped and she had no pulse. A respiratory machine kept her breathing and rigor mortis had set in, doctors said.

“Her skin had already started to harden and her fingers curled. Death had set in,” said son Jim Thomas.

They rushed her to a West Virginia hospital. Doctors put Thomas on a special machine which induces hypothermia. The treatment involves lowering the body temperature for up to 24 hours before warming a patient up.

After that procedure, her heart stopped again.

“She had no neurological function,” said Dr. Kevin Eggleston.

Her family said goodbye and doctors removed all the tubes.

However, Thomas was kept on a ventilator a little while longer as an organ donor issue was discussed.

Ten minutes later the woman woke up and started talking. (Emphasis mine)

People can kid themselves all they want, but when it comes to soft drinks, everyone knows Mountain Dew is king. A slightly lesser known fact is that the Dew pays tribute to Ale-8-One to keep the drink from stealing his crown.

“Ale-8” was first bottled in Kentucky in 1926. As much a staple of the bluegrass state as tobacco and basketball, this blend of citrus ginger ale has remained a local favorite, available only in Kentucky, and parts of Ohio and Indiana.

But, thanks to Al Gore’s internet, I can have the generous folks at the bottling plant in Winchester send me a case.

I think I had started to feel a little lethargic in regard to Narnia lately. After going through the list and getting a little refresher on the story, I’ve gotten amped again to see it.

The latest trailer did not really impress me – the film looks a little too much like a riff on The Lord of the Rings, something I think Tolkien and Lewis would be the first to agree that Narnia is most definitely not.

Fans have nearly driven themselves ape over images from the trailers, most of which are merely quibbles. Film is a different medium than a novel – an adaptation will sometimes involve embellishments, subtractions or additions, to make a literary story work visually. Since Lewis left so much to the imagination in his narratives, such development is almost required.

I make no predictions about this one. The previous film hit more beats than it missed, but the ones it missed flew wide of the mark. I would hate to see similar results this time around. The strength of Caspian rests on the story. The closer the filmmakers stick, the better the film will be.

My excitement for this picture grows every week. Each trailer has further revealed the many layers this story looks to cover, particularly Bruce Wayne’s struggle against a kind of criminal that more closely resembles the senseless malevolence of terrorism.

The more I see, the bigger the story looks, and the rumors that the filmmakers were working feverishly to trim the film down from three hours look less and less unfounded.

The inclusion of District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) adds a twist. Fans will recall his destiny as Two-Face. Since I learned of the character’s inclusion in the film, I’ve been curious how Christopher Nolan would handle it.

There’s much more to the character than what we saw in Tommy Lee Jones’s incarnation. Dent’s arc, if handled properly, would add a great character-driven element to the mythos of this particular iteration. I love the foreshadowing offered by the trailer as Dent pontificates, “You either die the hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

Once the previous Batman films ventured into the realm of two villains per picture, things started to go a little awry. Begins handled the dual villainy of the Scarecrow and Ra’s Al Ghul pretty well. But, the Joker’s already larger than life, and there has to be a line to cross where things start to look bloated. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Various other sites are beginning to post pictures of Dent after his…”incident.” I’ve avoided them, plan to until I see the film. I want to be blown away by this picture. I expect to be. And I have had my hopes dashed before, so I remain a little guarded. Sequels like Aliens, The Godfather Part II, or even Spider-Man 2, do not appear very often. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I’m falling behind. Some of the scenes I’m working on set up later pay-offs that the first draft didn’t really nail. Actually, keeping with the metaphor, the hammer missed the nail completely, and splintered the wood quite badly.

All of the easier scenes are done and just waiting to be pasted in with the whole. But after two days, I’m about two pages short of the daily goal. Not that the writing has been the only challenge; there was a trip to the ER last night (mother and baby are fine – no worries), and the overtime I had to work the day before.

The trip to the ER turned out to be nothing. Pregnancy is just strange, and the things that can signal danger can also be just as benign. Thankfully, this was the latter.

The overtime was a different matter, somewhat similar to that moment in Scrooged. Rose! You have to work late! If you can’t work late, I can’t work late. If I can’t work late…I CAN’T WORK LATE! So said the fellow with whom I usually carpool. Kind of. He doesn’t normally call me Rose. And I needed the money, so I wasn’t going to complain.

Anyway, enough with the excuses. Gotta try and hammer out six pages tonight. And Lost is on. (sigh) Choices.